Integrating disciplines / Integrando disciplinas

By Marcel Bursztyn, Gabriela Litre and Stéphanie Nasuti

marcel-bursztyn
Marcel Bursztyn (biography)

An English version of this post is available

Como conseguir que um grupo multidisciplinar integrado por economistas, climatologistas, geógrafos, antropólogos, biólogos, sociólogos, jornalistas, engenheiros químicos, engenheiros ambientais e advogados trabalhe de maneira mais interdisciplinar?

gabriela-litre
Gabriela Litre (biography)

Esse foi o desafio encarado por um projeto de pesquisa sobre as percepções de agricultores familiares de quatro biomas brasileiros (a Amazônia, o Cerrado, o Pantanal e o Semiárido) sobre os impactos que as mudanças climáticas estão tendo nos seus modos de vida. Esse pequenos produtores, com baixa disponibilidade de capital, estão expostos a riscos naturais e socioeconômicos, e são extremadamente vulneráveis aos eventos climáticos extremos.

stephanie-nasuti
Stéphanie Nasuti (biography)

Um fator chave foi a demarcação do marco teórico do projeto, que incluiu a hipótese de que o sucesso das politicas de adaptação aumenta consideravelmente quando essas políticas se baseiam em um conhecimento de primeira mão das realidades cotidianas e das percepções das populações envolvidas.

O desenho da pesquisa foi guiado por três elementos básicos:

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Six types of unknowns in interdisciplinary research

By Gabriele Bammer

gabriele-bammer
Gabriele Bammer (biography)

What types of unknowns are tackled in interdisciplinary research?  I draw on my experience directing a program of research on the feasibility of prescribing pharmaceutical heroin as a treatment for heroin dependence. Analysis of this case revealed six different types of unknowns:

  1. Disciplinary unknowns
  2. Unknowns of concern to stakeholders
  3. Unknowns marginalised by power imbalances
  4. Unknowns in the overlap between disciplines
  5. New problem-based unknowns
  6. Intractable unknowns.

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Transdisciplinarity: Learning together to teach together

By BinBin Pearce, Carolina Adler and Christian Pohl

pearce
BinBin Pearce (biography)

Are there innovative methods that enable students to frame and confront the complexity of real-world problems in the context of sustainable development? Which learning approaches help students engage with design thinking to understand a particular system, and also to start thinking about responsible solutions? Which approaches enable students to reflect on their own actions, as well as become aware of the importance of diverse stakeholder perspectives and how these play out in real-world contexts?

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La modélisation participative, un lieu privilégié pour l’interdisciplinarité? / Participatory modeling: An ideal place for interdisciplinarity?

By Pierre Bommel

bommel
Pierre Bommel (biography)

An English version of this post is available

La modélisation participative cherche à impliquer un groupe de personnes dans la conception et la révision d’un modèle. L’objectif à terme consiste à mieux caractériser les problèmes actuels et imaginer collectivement comment tenter de les résoudre. Dans le domaine de l’environnement en particulier, il apparaît nécessaire que les acteurs concernés se sentent impliqués dans la démarche de modélisation, afin qu’ils puissent exprimer leurs propres points de vue, mais aussi pour mieux s’engager dans des décisions collectives. De ce fait, pour aborder la gestion intégrée des ressources, il est nécessaire de mettre les acteurs au centre des préoccupations de recherche, à la fois lors de la phase la conception du modèle mais aussi pour l’exploration de ces scénarios.

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Working together for better outcomes: Lessons for funders, researchers, and researcher partners

By Kit Macleod

kit-macleod
Kit Macleod (biography)

As a community of interdisciplinary practice we need to share our collective knowledge on how funders, researchers and wider research partners can work together for better outcomes to address pressing societal challenges.

Funding interdisciplinary research: improving practices and processes

Seven key challenges to funding interdisciplinary research include:

  1. No agreed criteria defining ‘excellence’ in interdisciplinary research.
  2. Poor agreement of the benefits and costs of interdisciplinary ways of working.
  3. No agreement on how much or what kind of additional funding support is required for interdisciplinary research.
  4. No consensus on terminology.
  5. No clearly delineated college of peers from which to select appropriate reviewers.
  6. Limited appropriate interdisciplinary peer review processes.
  7. Restrictions within funding organisations concerning budget allocations and support for interdisciplinary research.

A guidance note for research funders then suggests ways forward from the pre-call stage to evaluation of completed research projects.

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The promise of using similar methods across disciplines

By Allison Metz

Alison Metz
Allison Metz (biography)

Interdisciplinarity has the potential to broaden and deepen our understanding and application of methods and tools to address complex challenges. When we embrace interdisciplinarity we broaden what we know about the potential methods for assessing and tackling problems, and we deepen our understanding of specific methods by applying these methods across different contexts. In my pursuit to understand co-creative processes by interconnected stakeholders – i.e., the deep and authentic engagement of stakeholders across governance, science, and community boundaries to identify and optimize the use of evidence for positive outcomes – I have been influenced by methods used outside of my discipline of implementation science and current context of child welfare services. For example, I recently read an article that studied the co-production of knowledge in soils governance (Prager & McKee, 2015) in the United Kingdom and was struck by the usefulness of these ideas for child welfare services in the United States.

The authors use a methodology referred to as “action arenas” to describe and discern the co-production processes that take place between specific stakeholder groups in soils governance.

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Distinguishing between multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinarity – ‘theological’ hair-splitting or essential categorisation?

By Gabriele Bammer

gabriele-bammer
Gabriele Bammer (biography)

In a recent special issue of the journal Nature on interdisciplinarity (17 September 2015, p313-315), Rick Rylance criticised “arcane debates about whether research is inter-, multi-, trans-, cross- or post-discipli­nary”, opining “I find this faintly theological hair-splitting unhelpful.” Does he have a point?

Rylance was discussing these distinctions in the context of research funding, especially relating to effective funding and evaluation of… well, what are we talking about and what are we going to call it? That’s the nub of the problem. For now, let’s stick with the term used by Rylance, namely “interdisciplinarity”.

Rylance also introduced a current project of the Global Research Council, which is comprised of the heads of science and engineering funding agencies from around the world. The Global Research Council has selected interdisciplinarity as one of its two annual themes for an in-depth report, debate and statement between now and mid-2016.

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